The Internet has become a popular tool for locating relevant information. Through the World Wide Web and other publicly available databases, vast amounts of information are now accessible to users throughout the world. Search engines and directories are utilized to aid the user in the search for the most relevant information pertaining to a given query. Examples of such search engines and directories include Google™, Yahoo™, and Excite™, among many others. These search engines and directories work by building centralized index databases and directories, which can be queried quickly and reliably.
Recently, several companies have introduced Desktop Search tools, which integrate traditional search engines with the capability to search a user's local machine or network. For example, a vendor such as Google™, Microsoft™, or Yahoo™ might provide a downloadable program which a user may install on his machine. The program may then provide a single search tool where the user can search for information from the Internet at large as well as from his local machine or network with a single search.
These Desktop Search tools, however, do not solve the problem of security associated with enterprise contents. Namely, while a user searching his own hard drive may not present a security concern, a user searching hard drives of others within an enterprise, or accessible server content within an enterprise, may present security concerns. Most enterprises have certain document that are confidential, and many enterprises have complex security hierarchies limiting access to many different documents, directories, servers, etc.
While Desktop Search tools may have some security features, they all rely on general security policies to determine which files to index. Thus, an administrator may restrict certain files from being indexed, thus rendering them unsearchable by others. There is no way to allow a document to be indexed and searchable to only selected users. While the underlying document itself could still be password-protected, in order to allow those with the password to find the document, the document must be indexed and searchable to all users in the Enterprise. This presents security problems because the index information can sometimes contain information that is confidential, and sometimes the mere fact that a file exists is confidential.
What is needed is a solution that allows enterprise users to search documents in multiple remote content repositories in an enterprise environment while addressing security concerns.